Yamatai

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history of Japan

...than contemporary Japanese accounts, confirm the existence of an unmarried queen named Himiko but place her in the early 3rd century
ad. According to some sources, she ruled an area referred to as
Yamatai, the location of which remains in dispute. The characters used to represent the name Himiko mean “sun child,” or “sun daughter” in archaic Japanese, and it is...

Scholars are divided as to whether
Yamatai was located in northern Kyushu or in the Kinai district (central Honshu). If it was in northern Kyushu, then the union of states was a purely local government, unrelated to the Yamato court of later times, but if it was in the Kinai district, then it would be natural to see it as the ancestor of that court. This would suggest, in turn, that Japan had...